The more recent acceptance and use of public communications networks such as the internet, has provided a network or system through which the viewing of both real and personal property may be accomplished in a much more efficient and desirable way than has ever previously been provided or available. The increased ability to handle larger amounts of data and information over the internet has further allowed more graphical images to be presented to the viewer, which facilitates much more effective presentations or tours to users of the internet.
While there have been prior attempts to make available the viewing of still photographs of property over the internet, the prior systems have typically required that a photographer be hired on behalf of the company providing the website, who must go to the property to take photographs. The website company then posted the one or more still photographs on the website, and later input text describing the still photographs.
These prior systems therefore have a relatively high cost in the commercial creation of the photographs, and then in their placement on the website of the website company. The prior systems also took an unjustifiably long amount of time before the photographs of the property were available to viewers or potential purchasers.
It is therefore an object of an embodiment of this invention to provide a property viewing system wherein affiliates, such as real estate agents or property owners (in the real estate embodiments of this invention), property managers (in the rental property embodiments of this invention), or the property management companies & owners (in the vacation rental or room rental embodiments of this invention), may take their own photographs and upload the images along with the desired data sets to the website, thereby constructing their own virtual tour which would be available immediately or in real-time.
In the typical prior systems the viewer accessing a property viewing website over the internet would find one or more photographs on the first page for that property unit, but typically must then move from new page to new page in order to view the plurality of photographs of the property. In order to go back to a prior view of the property to look at it a second time and to look at other pages which contain other photographs of the property, the user must typically click on the back button on his internet browser. Requiring a user to continually go back to the start page for a series of photographs or images makes the tour more tedious and less desirable for the user. This becomes a relatively slow process and does not provide a sufficiently easy or desirable virtual tour of the property.
It is therefore an object of an embodiment of this invention to provide a property viewing system in which the viewer may take a virtual tour of property while staying on the same reference page, and further which provides the index, tabs or other selection means to directly go to each of the other multiple views of the property from the same page. Some of the embodiments of this invention have the advantage of providing a tab system which allows the user to view or access any one of the tour views or pages from any one of the tour views or pages, significantly reducing the amount of time to take a complete virtual tour, and making it more pleasing to the consumer.
In most property viewing situations, merely providing small single shot still photographs does not make the best presentation of the property being viewed. It is much more desirable to provide larger photographs, panorama photographs or movable photographs, which allow the potential customer or viewer to see a more complete view of the property, and to control the movement of the photograph or the view of the property. Providing panorama photographs also gives the viewer more of a feeling or belief that he or she is actually taking a tour of the property, and turning their head or looking around the property unit, as opposed to merely looking at a still photograph.
A feature of one embodiment of this invention therefore provides a virtual property viewing or tour system, which provides one or more panorama or movable photographs. Text and/or still photographs may be combined with the movable photographs as part of the same virtual tour.
There are numerous different embodiments for which this invention may be used, such as without limitation, providing virtual tours of real property for sale or lease, virtual tours of vacation properties and virtual tours of vehicles, virtual tours of art or museums using movable photographs; to name but a few examples.
There is not currently a sufficiently versatile website which contains a virtual tour of real property, with options of having a movable photograph with a three hundred sixty degree range, a movable photograph having less than a three hundred sixty degree range, and still photographs, in the same is virtual tour. With the varying types of photographs and photographic capabilities of affiliates and potential affiliates, this type of flexibility is long overdue. It is therefore an object of this invention and a feature of one embodiment of the invention to provide a virtual tour site which is versatile enough to optionally provide a movable photograph with a three hundred sixty degree range, a movable photograph having less than a three hundred sixty degree range. It is a still further object to provide such a site which additionally provides the option for still photographs.